In the prior art, it may be known to provide carts that can be wheeled manually between locations with one or more lowered walls to facilitate loading, and/or with an integral scale to weigh transported items. The prior art may also include other devices for sensing the cumulative weight of a carried load, as well as the remote transmission and storage of information concerning packages.
Previously, some wheeled devices—see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,150,617 issued to Hart et al. for a “Vehicle with Weight Sensing” on Nov. 21, 2000—may have been provided with a processor to output and display a carried bulk payload's cumulative weight and/or a rate of change of the bulk payload's weight. Perhaps notably, however, such previous devices may not have been adapted to fix and/or assign any particular rate of change, neither temporally nor spatially, to any particular part or aspect of the bulk payload. Previous devices of this nature may not allow accurate determination of which rate of weight change may have been owing to which part, or parts, of a bulk payload. It should perhaps be clear, from the foregoing, that art related to the transport of bulk payloads should perhaps not be considered directly analogous, nor as prior art in relation, to the shipment of packages.
What may be needed is a cart for contemporaneously moving numerous packages within a facility which provides for an incremental and/or decrementing calculation of the weight for each package carried thereby. It may be advantageous to provide such a cart with an onboard processor to analyze the cumulative weight of numerous packages which may be carried by the cart, and to incrementally and/or decrementally assess the individual weight of each package when it is transferred to and/or from the cart. There may also be some advantage to providing such a cart with an onboard power source, a scanning device to read information concerning each package carried thereby, and/or a display which digitally displays the weight of each package carried by the cart.
One of the objectives of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method for moving items within a facility
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method for determining the weight for each item carried.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method for moving freight items across a warehouse.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device with configurations which may include a tree cart, a flat bed, and/or a caged bin.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to enable scanning of freight items and/or carts to derive tracking events.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to enable events (e.g., cart tracking events) to be applied to items (e.g., all items) carried by a cart.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to enable real-time visibility scans to be performed of the items carried by a cart.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to enable capture of item attributes for additional charges and/or recovery.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to capture reweigh through an embedded scale (e.g., the scale may, according to some embodiments of the invention, be a floor scale).
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to enable manual input of item dimensions.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to enable manual input of assessorial attributes and/or characteristics for carried items.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to merge scan and recovery data for transmission to and/or integration with tracking and billing functions within a larger operation, for example, at the facility or across many facilities.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted to be mobile and/or cordless.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted for use in parcel delivery or postal applications, for transport of non-conveyable freight items or bulk freight items that bypass conveyors to trailers, for transport of parcels where no conveyor exists, and/or to improve or facilitate specialized sorts (e.g., dangerous goods, air sorts), skid breakdown or build, or reweigh and movement of specific and applicable freight.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted for use in airports or with airlines, for use with baggage trolleys, and/or to improve or facilitate weighing and movement of oversized baggage or air cans.
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted for use in supply chain management, pick and pack or reverse pick and pack operations, and/or weigh and movement of products (e.g., regular and oversized products).
One of the objectives of an aspect of the present invention may be to provide a cart device, system and/or method adapted for use in grocery stores, weigh and movement of produce, and/or inventory management.
It is an object of the present invention to obviate or mitigate one or more of the aforementioned mentioned disadvantages and/or shortcomings associated with the prior art, to provide one of the aforementioned needs, and/or to achieve one or more of the aforementioned objects of the invention.